Toronto Invades Columbus: What It Means For MLS

If you’re an MLS fan, you probably don’t want to read another damn article about Toronto taking 2,300+ supporters across the border to Columbus last week for the season opener in Crew Stadium. We all know that’s a mightily impressive number and almost certainly an MLS regular season record for away support.

But it is worth talking about the reaction to and consequences of the Canadian Invasion.

Toronto fans were both praised and criticised. The National Post reported that “They came, they drank, and some of them urinated next to a church,” with one man arrested. Not surprisingly, having only a few portable toilets to service a couple of thousand fans drinking didn’t work that well.

The police were unimpressed. “They’re pissing all over the damn place, and as you can see, they’ve littered it up considerably,” Columbus police lieutenant Kevin Conley said. “And then they decided that they were going to surround one of our cars like they were the Indians and the car was Custer.”

Some Toronto fans themselves were disappointed by the behaviour of their fellow travellers. Blogger Gramsci’s Kingdom told Pitch Invasion that outside of the hardcore support from certain groups, many who went seemed more interested in showing themselves off than supporting the team.

The Red Patch Boys are actually proper ultras. The singing and the boozing are a little more English-style, but they are big on tifos and banners and hiring the plane to fly over the stadium trailing the “Come on You Reds” sign was bloody brilliant.

But a chunk of their road support are really just thrill-seekers. The fact the 2500 people showed up in Columbus was as much a
statement of how much TFC fans are in love with themselves as it was about how much they’re in love with the team (i.e. “look at us, aren’t we brilliant having so many people here?”). The way you can tell is the singing – it’s much better when we have fewer fans. All these extras aren’t especially dedicated.

The smoke bombs were kind of cool when they were in the stands – heaving eight or nine of them onto the field was a really bad idea. That plus the overall loutish behaviour of a number of our heavily inebriated fans means we didn’t set the best example.

Kenn Tomasch, a former MLS announcer, was also critical and asked “Do you think incidents like this hurt the cause of traveling supporters in MLS?”

Perhaps, but there was a lot of positive reaction from Columbus as well. Many Columbus fans were impressed and hoped the example set would rub off on their own fans.

“The FC fans are amazing,” Craig Casto, a Columbus native and a regular at Crew games told the National Post. “They sang every word to our national anthem. I don’t even know the words to the Canadian anthem.

“Our fans could learn something about supporting their team from the Toronto fans.”

Columbus players and staff also seemed pleased that Toronto’s showing did prompt Crew supporters’ to make their loudest and strongest showing yet. Crew coach Sigi Schmid said that “”I think it’s great for the atmosphere. I think soccer players are no different than Saving Jane [band performing in postgame concert] out there now; they’re entertainers and when you have a crowd and you have an atmosphere, you want to perform. From that standpoint, I thought it was great. I thought our fans stepped up to the plate as well.”

So what do you think about the showing? Were you there, and if so, were the reports on the behaviour accurate?

No one got hurt and essentially there’s very little wrong with a bit of public drunkeness. Think of any American football game, especially college (ie. Ohio state) and one realizes that this was only good clean fun.

In comparison, when 50,000 attended the Blue Jays home opener in Toronto several hundred Boston fans showed up as well and started more than a couple of fights in the cheap seats. 1/5th of the fans in Columbus were rooting for TFC and this is all that happened? Gimme a break – this ain’t news.

April 7, 2008 at 12:35 pmKT

Thanks for the link, Tom.

Just to be clear, I’m not critical of the majority of TFC’s fans – just the ones who think it’s perfectly acceptable to be a jackass in public. And Toronto doesn’t have the monopoly on those. And I just asked the question – do you think this hurts the cause? No one’s answered yet. 🙂

April 7, 2008 at 3:24 pmRichard Whittall

You get 2500 travelling supporters, there are bound to be some problems…peeing everywhere doesn’t even come close to bottle-smashing, damage to nearby vehicles, booing the national anthem, basically the type of antics you might see a few clicks from a continental stadium in Europe when England is away…this constant baiting of TFC fans ‘being in love with themselves’ is getting a bit pretentious guys.

Anyway, you should talk more about how utterly embarrassing Toronto was against Dallas on Saturday…that made me cringe white. For Canadians who have to hear Craig Forrest and Gerry Dobson make the calls, it makes you want to scream!

…not as pretentious as their own self love parade. It’s not baiting when it’s true.

As far as 2500 in away support, its a good number to be sure. I’m sure Columbus was shocked to actually see more than 1 stand in use for once. The behavior though, pretty disgusting. If they fancy themselves a group of supporters clubs, you have to police your own. Everyone does (or should) have a leader of the group who lays down the law a bit.

Oh and rent buses with toilets. Use them before you get off to tailgate and hold it until you get into the stadium if you find you have to wiz again. It’s really not hard. If you feel you MUST piss in public, how about sneaking between 2 cars and have a buddy stand watch so no kids, elderly people etc. see your dick flapping in the wind? I know I have to stop using common sense so much.

Finally, there are a bunch of TFC fans who claimed that some of the Columbus staff told them to piss on the gate facing the church (which was having services) Uh, fellas, the ‘I was only following orders’ routine hasn’t been a valid defense since Nürnberg. If they told you it was OK to go loot the local 7-11 would you run over and break that law too because they told you too?

You were born with brains and they continue to function even when you are drunk. Use them.

April 8, 2008 at 5:57 amRichard Whittall

Papa Bear — There’s no excusing the behaviour of some of the fans out that day…having lived in Toronto for most of my life, I can tell you this is one of the rudest cities I’ve ever seen, and I’m fairly well traveled. I just don’t understand where this image of Toronto FC fans ‘loving themselves’ comes from. Maybe if you could offer a few examples other than the one featured in this article. I still can’t pinpoint what any of them did to deserve the bile directed at them I read on these MLS blogs. I mean, for God’s sake, they’re supporting their team, is that not allowed?

April 8, 2008 at 9:05 amKevin

Past week, the KC Wizards had less than 10,000 in the stands…but everyone else had AT LEAST 17,000. And the Galaxy had a full crowd of 27,000 in attendance. I’m hoping the average league attendance hovers around 17,000 for the year.

As for Toronto fans, I can understand people getting ticked about their behavior, but 2,300 out-of-towners coming to spend money is still pretty damn good, no?

April 8, 2008 at 8:20 amCohen

It was a step forward for the league: people care, the team matters, the results matter. It is more than a game! Kudos to the Toronto supporters. Maybe DC, Houston, LA fans will follow suit.
Two weeks into the season, I have been impressed with the quality, attendance, and the atmosphere at the stadiums.

April 8, 2008 at 8:37 amChris

To answer Kenn’s question, no, it does not hurt the cause of away supporters. You know what 2,300 supporters bring with them? Money and the possibility of more money. By the by, why weren’t there enough port-a-potties and why wasn’t there sufficient crowd control? Isn’t this the home of OSU where 13,000 drunken supporters should be considered a light night out for a home game? If no fights or riots occurred, this has not hurt the cause (should be a right, I mean, the front offices do want the stands to be full, right?) of traveling supporters.

April 8, 2008 at 1:51 pmKT

Kevin:

You do know that Kansas City’s temporary ground only seats a shade over 10,000, right?

Now that that’s out of the way…

Chris, Columbus Crew Stadium has been standing for almost nine years now, and has hosted more than a couple of games with a hell of a lot more people attending than attended the Crew’s home opener. Port-a-potties? This isn’t Woodstock, it’s a stadium. You can’t tell me US-Mexico (more than once) didn’t have a bunch of people urinating on fences facing a church (as far as we know) but that Torontonians just can’t hold it in, so if there are more than 2,000 of them in any one area, the facilities just aren’t sufficient for them.

And as mentioned – if you gotta go, you gotta go. But you don’t gotta go on a fence facing a frigging church.

You have respect for the game – shown by ardently supporting a team that’s not very good. Now have some respect for yourselves and the other people you have to share the orb with.

And, again, this is aimed solely at a very small minority of fans of any team. I’m sure that most of the 2,300 or so Toronto fans were well-behaved. Unfortunately, it’s the dillholes who spoil things for everybody and then pass it off as just passion for the game or “no worse than what you’ll find at Ohio State” or whatnot. It ain’t right. There’s no rationalization.

April 8, 2008 at 4:59 pmAntono G

The “in love with themselves” comment was mine. It stems entirely from my experience in the stands. My season tickets are in a fun but not particulalrly loud part of BMO, and trust me, the atmosphere in my part of the stands in columbus – allegedly filled with hardcore TFC-lovers one and all – was weak. Couldn’t even give Dichio a full minute on 24.

For the most part, it was tourism rather than support. But boy was everyone proud to say that they were part of this massive supporters event.

I exclude the regular RPB crew from this description, obviously. They’re nothing but class. It was the rest of the crowd that was the problem.

Oh, and the team itself is a problem, obviously.

April 8, 2008 at 8:32 pmRichard Whittall

Amen to that. Toronto are awful. Truly embarrassing to watch. The first five minutes against DC United was the worst performance by a group of eleven humans playing soccer that I’ve ever witnessed…

April 9, 2008 at 1:00 amKevin

But KT, it’s not like they were setting attendance records prior to that…

April 10, 2008 at 8:19 pmEricJ

Why exactly does it matter that a church was nearby? It DOESN’T is the answer. Peeing in public, well that crude, but without a better system you have to expect it. Moreover, I am sure pee drys 😀

April 15, 2008 at 11:25 pmSteve

SIGH Really? I’m glad people are so confident in the state of MLS that they take the time to badmouth 2,300 people for driving for 7 hours (across a border I might add) to see a game.

As someone who went to Columbus … did some people act badly? Yes. Were lots of people drunk? Yes. Did people pee on a fence? Yes (good job Crew, you have 3 porta potties the other side of the ground and you expect away fans to just know where they are?)

Did anything truly bad or dangerous happen? No. There was no organized violence and anything that happened was on par with NFL/college football games. The fact that the Columbus PD are idiots (see above quote) exacerbated the few problems there were.

People need to stop denigrating the best supported team in MLS (not the best supporters, which I will still give to DC). We’re good for this league. Deal with it.

If you really want to cover fans in this league, you would be better to spend your time asking why Chivas have less than a 1k season ticket holders or the LA Galaxy had a reported (and therefore bumped up) attendance of 20k on Sunday … WHEN THEY HAVE DAVID BECKHAM IN THEIR SIDE!!!